Smarter Financial Planning Software for Growing Trusts
Developed alongside MAT CFOs, SBS Financial Planner offers school budgeting software that understands the unique complexities of schools and Multi-Academy Trusts.
Why SBS Financial Planner?
How our MAT and school budgeting software will improve your operational excellence
Truly MAT-Led Budgeting
SBS Financial Planner supports the scale and complexity of MATs, allowing assumptions to be set centrally, model trust wide scenarios, and ensure consistency across all schools.
Smarter Financial Decisions
With real-time insights and forecasting, MAT leaders can plan ahead with confidence, identify potential efficiencies, and ensure financial sustainability.
Powerful Integrations & Real-Time Modelling
Seamlessly syncs with several finance systems. Updated tables are available for NI rates, pay scales, Extended Leave Rates and LA Funding. Model GAG pooling, top-slice, and school-level budgets with confidence.
Ensured Compliance & Audit Readiness
SBS Financial Planner keeps MATs and schools fully compliant with DfE and statutory reporting requirements.
“SBS Financial Planner is perfect for growing Trusts. It’s scalable, easy to use, and offers the kind of insights you need to lead effectively. We can drill into data, run insightful reports, and it saves a lot of time. The planner’s accuracy and automation give us the confidence we need to make financial decisions.” - Phil Norman, Chief Finance and Operations Officer
Powerful Features, Better Financial Decisions
The right tools to manage budgets, forecast with confidence, and stay in control of your Trust’s finances
Centrally Manage Budgets & Assumptions
Gain full control over your Trust’s financial planning with a centralised approach to budgeting. Set core assumptions such as pay scales and funding rates, and group schools by phase, region, or funding model to reflect your MAT’s structure.
This ensures consistency, accuracy, and flexibility while maintaining financial oversight.
Transactional Drill-Down in Reports & Monitoring
Drill-down to the source of transactions within your reports, to negate the need to switch between systems.
With a drill-down feature, you can move from high-level financial summaries to detailed expenditure insights, helping you spot trends, prevent overspending, and ensure financial accountability across your schools.
Unlimited Scenarios & Role-Based User Access
Plan with confidence using unlimited scenarios to test different funding and cost assumptions. Use private and hidden views for leadership discussions before finalising plans.
With unlimited users and role-based permissions, you can ensure the right people have access to the right data—enhancing collaboration while maintaining security.
Comprehensive Support & Fully Managed Onboarding
From day one, our team is here to help. SBS Financial Planner includes fully managed onboarding, unlimited training, and dedicated support via live chat, helpdesk, and step-by-step video guides.
Whether you need help with setup or day-to-day queries, our expert team is on hand to ensure you get the most out of your budgeting software.
Proud to integrate with the following software
SBS Financial Planner
is trusted by:
250+
Multi-academy Trusts
2,000+
Schools
Book a call with the team today to explore the new software.
Book a demo
Meet our Financial Planning Software Experts
From onboarding to optimisation - expert support every step of the way.
Connor Wilson
Sales Lead
Connor has been with SBS since 2024, bringing almost 10 years of experience within education finance.
Having worked for multiple financial management system providers, Connor has witnessed first hand the challenges faces by MATs and utilises his skills and experience to lead the sales team. He works closely with the development team to ensure SBS Financial Planner continues to save our customers time, and tackle the challenges faced by MATs everyday.
Richard Page
Digital & Operations Director
Richard is a strategic operations and digital transformation expert with over twenty years of leadership experience.
He has held multiple senior roles at SBS since starting in 2012, including Director of Operations & Digital. Overseeing services he has led the development of SBS Financial Planner, CRM enhancements, and digital innovation, achieving 95% customer retention. Richard continues to drive digital system integration and operational excellence.
.png)
Simon Randall
Customer Support Team Leader (SaaS)
Simon has worked at SBS for almost ten years. Starting as a Service Desk technician, working his way to senior consultant.
He has had roles in Implementation, training, quality assurance and now is the Customer Support Team Leader, overseeing the support team for service desk and onboarding. He is an expert in all technical aspects of the financial planner systems, onboarding process and account management. Simon is motivated to drive retention, customer focused service and developing individuals in the support team.
Download our FREE guide to Financial Modelling in SBS Financial Planner
8 ways to help streamline your budgeting setting and decision making.
Find out how SBS Financial Planner can help you create unlimited scenarios and compare them to your budget to optimising your spending.
Download Free Guide
Book a Free Demo of SBS Financial Planner Today
SBS can take care of your day-to-day operations as well as manage your school budget using SBS Financial Planner.
- Centralise and simplify your financial processes
- Real-time forecasting, tracking and budgeting
- Built-in compliance and supports GAG pooling
Get in touch
See some of our Frequently Asked Questions
SBS Financial Planner is a complete budgeting and forecasting tool designed for schools, MATs, and local authorities. Key features include centralisation of chart of accounts and budget assumptions such as pay scales and inflation, pupil number forecasting, integrated staffing and payroll planning, multi-year budget modelling, scenario planning, consolidated Trust-wide reporting, and automated DfE-compliant reports. It’s built to simplify complex finance processes and support better strategic decision-making.
Book a no obligation demo to see all of our features in action
Regardless of whether you are a single school, MAT or LA, SBS Financial Planner is accessed via a single login and database.
It gives you total control over a single chart of accounts, centralised assumptions including pay scales, inflation and ERs pension, and other budget factors. Flexibility is also built in to cope with subtle differences between schools such as 1FTEs and pay scales, and to allow users to create different budget models and scenarios for one school or across the whole organisation.
Yes. SBS Financial Planner integrates seamlessly with popular finance systems, including Xero for Education, Sage Intacct, IRIS Financials and Iplicit. This allows you to automatically sync actuals and commitments, reducing manual data entry, improving accuracy, and keeping your budgets and reports up to date in real time. You can also transfer an agreed and forecast budget back into your finance system.
Unlike generic budgeting software, SBS Financial Planner is built with schools and MATs in mind. It was shaped with input from Trust CFOs, making it a true MAT-led solution.
It goes beyond basic spreadsheets by combining pupil forecasting, staffing, and financial planning into one platform, delivering DfE-compliant outputs and supporting both operational and strategic finance needs.
Yes. SBS Financial Planner supports multi-user access, making it easy for CFOs, SBMs, and finance teams to collaborate. Permissions can be customised so different users can view, edit, or report on specific areas of the budget without compromising data security or accuracy.
Most schools and MATs can be fully set up in just eight weeks. Our team handles the onboarding process, including data migration, customisation, and training, so you can start planning and reporting quickly without disrupting your finance workflows.
Yes. Every new SBS Financial Planner customer receives full onboarding support. This includes guided setup, personalised training for your team, and access to ongoing help from our UK-based support team. We also provide regular updates and webinars to help you make the most of new features.
Security is a top priority. SBS Financial Planner is hosted in secure UK-based data centres, is GDPR compliant, and uses industry-standard encryption of data, both in transit and at rest. Regular audits and backups ensure your financial information is safe and always available when you need it. An additional layer of security can be added to users via 2-factor authentication.
Yes. You can assign custom permissions for different roles within your organisation. For example, CFOs can have full access, while SBMs or school leaders can have restricted access to specific reports or areas of the budget, ensuring both collaboration and data security. You can also determine which users have access to specific schools within your organisation.
SBS Financial Planner produces DfE-compliant reports as well as custom dashboards and summaries for Trustees, Governors, and leadership teams. From consolidated Trust-wide overviews to detailed school-level analysis, the reporting tools make it easy to share accurate, timely data with stakeholders.
For MAT CFOs, SBS Financial Planner simplifies the challenge of managing multiple school budgets. It consolidates financial data across your Trust, giving you a clear, real-time view of performance, commitments, and forecasts. This makes it easier to plan strategically, report accurately, and make informed decisions for the Trust as a whole.